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PLEASANT PLACE (2021)
An immersive performance installation by Jos Porath
 

in collaboration with 
Marie S. Zwinzscher (dramaturgy, performance) 
Anne Storandt &
Winnie Christiansen (set design)
 

Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from
the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
 

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THE internet is an immersive institutional edifice, one that reflects and surrounds. There is no fixed entry-point: it is everywhere, all around us. CAN we speak in flowers? It will be easier for me to understand. COTTAGECORE under lockdown became a way to spin the terror and drudgery into something adorable. A vision of the world where men are not consciously excluded; they are simply an afterthought. CREATE calming content. IT amazes me that people can proudly declare how they are not romanticizing colonialism and then go on to describe in detail a colonial fantasy riddled with white supremacist ideology. HASHTAG fairies. Hashtag dream life. Hashtag lesbian. Hashtag cottagecore. TECHNOLOGY is not neutral. We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We're living in a world of connections, and it matters which ones get made and unmade. DENIAL of hustle culture and a fetishization of coziness. SOME of us get to dream of “running away to the land” while others struggle to take that land back. CAN our "digital real" please live? SOMETIMES I want to go home and listen to conversations about what happened in the past, and especially about what never happened. FOR many people who came of age as individuals and sexual beings online, the internet is not an esoteric corner of culture where people come to escape reality and play make-believe. It is reality. IN the dense thicket of the internet lies a verdant patch of grass where dappled sunbeams peek through the leaves, resting fawns doze about, a troop of woodland mushrooms grows underfoot, and a brook faintly burbles in the distance. WHAT is the best possible life for someone feminine but also an introvert? OTHER people may reject you but if you lie on the forest floor for long enough, the moss and fungi will always accept you as one of their own. WHY is it so furiously anti-modern? WHEN you describe everything in terms of “aesthetics”, everything becomes completely malleable, because you’re talking about it as simply a husk that can be filled with whatever ideological content people see fit. WHAT if we all lived like tradwives, minus the husbands? I am not the first to notice when people start attacking something that minority groups find to be of comfort. THE Spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than ‘that which appears is good, that which is good appears.’ WHAT is seen as feminine in cottagecore is respected, is strong. IN an era defined by anxiety, it’s not particularly surprising that so many recent fads have revolved around self-soothing. WHILE cottagecore could easily be mistaken for an escapist fantasy, its proponents insist it is a form of self-care. EVERYTHING is bathed in a golden haze of sunlight, or at least in a sepia-toned filter. A softening force in a harsh environment. A reaction to an overstimulated and oversaturated life many young people are living. AN ideal where I can be visibly queer in rural spaces. I stand at the threshold of cyberspace and wonder, is it possible that I am unwelcome here, too? WE have to be able to do both: to contemplate and participate, to leave and always come back, where we are needed. LOVE: animals & nature, art & cinema & music, domestic bliss & homelife, european cultural heritage, folklore & tradition, homesteading, my country & family, peace & simplicity. ENTER the screen, with the keys of your sub-cultures and everything. [...] The world is not flat, nor is it round. It is, infact, an anamorphosis image. WHAT do we actually value about this? It is not the cottage itself, or the English garden. ME, laying in the sun on the softest grass imaginable. I have nowhere to go, no one to be.

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